Nutrient needs vital, but planning for healthy vegan diet is easy

http://www.straitstimes.com/premium/forum-letters/story/nutrient-needs-vital-planning-healthy-vegan-diet-easy-20120824
Published on Aug 24, 2012

LAST Saturday's article ("Baby boomers, beware of going vegetarian") cites the increasing popularity of vegetarian diets in response to links between meat diets and such health problems as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

It cautions baby boomers about the need to plan their diets carefully if they choose to move away from meat.

I am a baby boomer, now aged 60.

I have been a vegetarian for more than 30 years and a vegan for the past 10 years; the difference being that a vegan is a vegetarian who eats no food from animals, such as dairy products or eggs.

I agree that vegetarians must pay attention to nutrients such as protein, calcium and vitamin B12 and there are bona fide bodies like the American Dietetic Association which offer planned diets for vegetarians (and everyone else).

Fortunately, planning a healthful, plant-based diet is easy, quick and inexpensive.

With the exception of vitamin B12, a vegetarian or vegan can obtain the necessary nutrients while enjoying a range of delicious, widely available plant foods.

For instance, calcium is found in sesame seeds, almonds, bok choy, broccoli, lady's finger (above), tempeh and tofu.

Also, some foods are fortified with nutrients such as calcium and vitamin B12, and supplements are widely available.

While baby boomers were taught that animal-based foods were our only protein source while we were growing up, we know now that protein is also found in many plant foods, including beans, grains, nuts and seeds.

To me, the most powerful reason for eating only plant-based foods concerns not health but kindness towards our fellow animals.

In my lifetime, a major change has taken place in how animal foods reach our tables.

We live now in the era of the factory farm, where animals, even fishes, are crowded together in unnatural conditions during their increasingly short lives; for instance chickens live only six weeks.

I am happy to spend a little time planning my diet so that I can avoid participation in this cruel system of food supply and instead support a kinder way of eating.

George Jacobs

President

Vegetarian Society (Singapore)

 

The Rise of the Power Vegans

Let's be mindful of what we consume

The Straits Times
ST Online Forum
Oct 4, 2010
Let's be mindful of what we consume

I REFER to Mr Paul Chan's letter ("'No meat, no fish' ideology can disturb eco balance"; Sept 26). First of all, let me clarify that I am not a vegetarian.

Mr Chan attacks the editorial ("No shark's fin, no meat"; Sept 5), as being "founded on flawed logic" and "unnatural". However his arguments too, are decidedly unconvincing.

Certainly, the right adjustments of the dietary habits of humans will not result in an apocalyptic end to the world.

To say that we have to "kill animals from land and sea to survive" and that we cannot survive on rice and vegetables alone is sweeping and quite simply illogical. Buddhist monks survive on just that - rice and vegetables, supplemented with beans. Depending on which survey one reads, up to 40 per cent of the population of India is vegetarian. Numerous families in Singapore, Buddhists and Hindus mainly, are vegetarian and quite happily and healthily so. In short, we do not have to slaughter to survive.

The option not to eat endangered species (and I personally have this commitment) is an ethical one. Humans are an example of apex (or top-level) predators out of control. History is strewn with the carcasses of species obliterated by man. The act of finning a shark, by cutting off fins and tossing the still alive but now finless shark overboard is considered by many (omnivores including) an act of barbarism. Sharks breathe by swimming, so oxygen-rich water rushes over their gills. Finless sharks, therefore, are condemned to suffocate.

Sharks, whales and blue-fin tuna, as well as their various prey species, have been in the oceans long before the advent of commercial fishing and whaling. Simple resource availability controls the balance in their populations - when there is less prey, predator numbers will fall as well. "Infestation" by whales, sharks and tuna will not happen. "Recovery" will be a better term.

What is special about humans is that we have become so successful because we are intelligent enough to produce force multipliers, like guns and fishing nets, and we are social, thus multiplying our capabilities further. We have now become a menace to the environment, depleting resources and species, and upsetting ecosystems like no species has done before. However, it is precisely this intelligence that lets many of us see the folly of indiscriminatory, unsustainable hunting.

Admittedly, meat will perhaps always form a part of the diet of some people but we should be mindful of the amount that is being consumed. The current wasteful carnage is certainly unsustainable in the long run and is extremely unhealthy.

Fam Shun Deng

Vice-President

Southeast Asian Biodiversity Society

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Give up meat to tackle global warming

The Electric New Paper :
Give up meat to tackle global warming
07 January 2010

THE recent Copenhagen conference could have been a monumental event to tackle climate change. It is tragic when politics gets in the way of saving humanity from its own actions.

However, whether or not governments do their share to ease global warming, as individuals, we can still step up to the climate change challenge.

Bringing our own bags when shopping or recycling as much as we can may not be enough to save this planet. Tackling climate change should also include dietary choices.

Livestock agriculture is one of the biggest culprits in the emission of greenhouse gases because it is an inefficient way of using resources.

We use a lot of plant food to feed the animals we later eat.

The grain we feed to livestock can feed all the people on our planet who go without enough to eat. By not consuming meat, we can help tackle global warming and ease world hunger at the same time.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was right when she said, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.'

If a global treaty cannot be agreed upon by governments and the big corporations, then individuals should take it upon themselves to do what we can. We owe it our future generations to do so.

FROM READER NURAISHAH ATHLY

Animals raised for food also treated cruelly

MY PAPER WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 21, 2009

MY SAY

I REFER to “Buying a fur coat? Watch this video first” (my paper, Oct 19).

Sadly, the horrible treatment suffered by raccoon dogs on fur farms highlighted is also inflicted on animals raised for food.

We treat chickens, pigs and other animals as if they are mere objects, when, in fact, they are intelligent, feeling fellow beings, as revealed by researchers.

Imagine how we humans would feel if more intelligent beings from another planet took a liking to human flesh and treated us the way we treat chickens, fishes and pigs, for example.

This cruelty is graphically documented in videos such as “Meet Your Meat” at www.goveg.com/factoryFarming.asp

Mr George Jacobs
President,
Vegetarian Society (Singapore)

You watched your friends and families killed before you.

Mirko Bagaric is a lawyer and author and Lyn White is communications director of Animals Australia.

He said:

...Animals hurt in the same way as humans. There are not different types of suffering.

...The physiological process by which pain is generated and felt is the same in humans and animals.

....The intensity with which animals feel pain or distress is no less than in humans. Anyone who has seen the cowering of a dog in response to a raised angry hand can be left in no doubt of that.

...The fact that an entity can experience suffering terminates all questions regarding its moral standing. The only commonality shared by humans, who command our concern and respect, is that they can hurt. The capacity to sense pain gives humans, no matter how marginalised, pitiably deranged or behaviourally maladaptive, moral status. Animals command our moral standing for exactly the same reason.

...The inability of animals to use words to communicate to us about their level of suffering is no excuse for ignoring their terrified screams.

Vegetarian Mee Reebus

Sunday Times
1st August 2009